Bedside Manner
by s1ncer1ty
Summary: An illness in the family leads Honjou Yuushi to cross paths with Crashers' newest team member, where he discovers he has more in common with this surly Rook than he'd ever imagined. Crashers Knight & Ran timeline


**"Bedside Manner"**  
by s1ncer1ty

While the news from the doctor that afternoon was far from grim, it also was hardly the prognosis either of us would have hoped to hear.

"There have been no negative side effects," the doctor told me in the hallway outside the hospital room where Taiyou slept off her latest round of treatment, "but your sister still hasn't responded to this new medication. We've had a fifty-fifty percent success rate on the trial so far, but Taiyou --"

"Is in the failing percentile," I finished for the man, hands slouching deep into my pockets as the hope we'd clung so fiercely to over the past month all but died.

"We'll give it another week, Honjou-san, but if she still shows no improvement, I'd recommend taking her off this drug and returning her to her previous routine."

"Taiyou-chan will be crushed," I said calmly, knowing full well that I was the one more likely to take this news so desperately to heart than my infinitely more stoic sister. "The decisions regarding her treatment are her own, but I've no doubt she'd agree with this course of action, if that's what you suggest."

The doctor bowed slightly at the waist and waited for my returning nod before righting himself. "I'm very sorry for the inconvenience, Honjou-san."

My teeth clenched in a tight smile as the doctor shifted his clipboard to the opposite arm and returned to his rounds. Only when he was out of sight did I release my breath with a hot curse, yanking my hands from my pockets and smacking the back of my fist against the wall I leaned against.

When she awoke, Taiyou would receive the news, as always, with a polite smile and a serene outward acceptance. I prayed the next time I visited I wouldn't walk in on her -- as I'd done in the last time she'd chanced an experimental treatment -- weeping as if her heart would break, behind the curtain that shielded her from the outside world. Or worse, I feared she might finally lose the steadfast belief that the doctors would ultimately be able to aid her condition.

Again, it seemed blind, unadulterated hope would prove my downfall when the bubble shattered.

It was, in all likelihood, an act of cowardice to turn away when I did. Although she would be napping for at least several hours more, I simply could not bear to face her a second time, knowing what I did of her condition. It wasn't as if she were going to die -- not now, not without putting up a solid fight in her day-to-day struggle to survive. She would still be here, for the time being... and she could always ring me if it were ever so life-threateningly vital.

I could have sat with Taiyou a few more minutes, -- held her hand or spoken softly to her while she slept -- but instead, I turned from that hated hospital room and walked away.

The eleventh-floor elevator was typically slow, and today was no different. As I pressed the button, waiting the eternity it always took for it to arrive, my hands slipped deep into the pockets of my coat, chin drooping with an unbecoming weariness. Though Taiyou wasn't always placed in the same room for her treatments, the placard on her door was a perpetual reminder of the life we struggled so hard to maintain.

One day her nametag would disappear forever from these hospital doors -- I only hoped Taiyou would still be around to know the pleasure of never having to return.

I shouldn't have looked back, my chest heaving in a large sigh as I spared one final glance down the hallway I'd grown so intimately familiar with. I'd spent altogether too much time over the past few months on this floor, watching the placards on the patients' doors change with the seasons. But just as the elevator doors swung open with a dim chime, the tag on the room just across from the elevator bay caught my eye -- a familiar family kanji that left me unnerved and muttering to the cluster of patients and doctors inside the elevator, "My apologies..."

Letting the elevator doors slide shut again without a second glance, I drew closer to that room, unable to tear my eyes away from the freshly inked kanji that read in neat strokes, 'Fujimiya Aya.' It could very easily have been a coincidence -- the surname wasn't terribly uncommon on this side of the city -- but some niggling inner voice told me otherwise. I placed my palm to the unlatched door and pushed it open only several inches before stopping short -- a recognizable shock of burgundy hair atop a long coat of zippered leather staying me from venturing further.

The expression of Fujimiya Ran -- our replacement Rook -- as he stared down at the figure of the girl in the hospital bed no longer held the tense glare I'd grown so accustomed to, but instead bore an almost unfamiliar, melancholy cast.

He spoke not a word as he moved closer to the bed and bent at the waist, catching the small, bare foot of 'Aya' in his hands. With a slow, careful motion, he rubbed those delicate, unmoving toes, stretching the arch and swiveling the ankle in a circle several times before dropping her foot and moving on to the next. I didn't dare breathe as he repeated this process with the tentative care of a lover, rubbing warmth into feet that put up no resistance in return.

Unable to draw my eyes away, I could have stared for ages, enthralled by that dim expression of humanity that had been absent in Ran all the time I'd known him -- had my own body not betrayed me with a light gasp of breath.

Instantly, Ran dropped the covers he'd been so carefully replacing atop the girl in the bed and snapped his head toward the door. Chewing the edge of my lower lip, I tried unsuccessfully to slink back -- wishing I could will myself invisible and inwardly cursing myself for drawing his attention -- only to be halted by a sharply uttered order: "Stop."

Ran circled the bed and stepped toward the door, throwing it open so swiftly I just barely made it out of the way before it slammed me in the face.

"Yuushi." Ran's eyes narrowed, his expression hardening as he lowered the cupped fist he'd clenched in anticipation of knocking my block off.

I brushed at the front of my long coat, as if to wipe away specks of dirt that didn't even exist. "Good afternoon to you as well, Ran," I said as casually as I could manage, squaring my shoulders. "What brings you here on such a wonderful day?"

"Cut the crap," he muttered icily. Though I made no effort to peer around him, he didn't budge the door even an inch, protecting the young woman inside from potentially prying eyes. "Go away."

"I didn't realize you still had family," I said, lifting my hand toward the sign bearing his surname on the outside of the door. "I suppose I shouldn't be as surprised as I am. Who is she, this Aya?" I smiled cordially, hoping that might melt the frigid glare he'd leveled at me.

"It's none of your business. Yuushi, please. Leave." If I didn't know him better, I might have suspected him of fringing on desperate. But Ran did not grow vexed; he did not fret over what his estranged teammates might think of his situation -- or so he'd led us all to believe.

"I'd rather not have to let this go, Ran. It's only fair, after I came all this way. Teammates shouldn't keep these sorts of secrets from one another." It was a weak argument, I knew, but I banked on the remaining vestiges of Ran's seemingly youthful naivety to emerge in my favor.

Ran's brows drew down in a tighter frown, thin lines knotting his forehead in contemplation. "Why _are _you here?" he demanded.

Though I was far from cheered, even at the prospect of getting to know even more of this mysterious man's inner secrets, I continued to smile easily. "I'm visiting a relative who's very ill and, apparently, located on the very same floor as your Aya. Now, if you would, Ran, who is she? Who is Aya?"

For an instant, I could almost envision the hairs bristling upon the back of Ran's neck. I wasn't sure exactly why I'd made it my mission to pry this information out of my newest teammate -- perhaps it was an instinctive, childlike reaction to try to prod someone so stubborn repeatedly, until they snapped. Or, more likely, it was simply a means to draw my mind away from the vast disappointment of my talk with my sister's doctor.

After what felt like an eternity, he snapped his gaze from my own and stepped away from the doorframe, pushing open the door with grudging reluctance. I squeezed through the narrow entrance he'd permitted me and followed him inside with downturned eyes as he circled the bed like a protective canine.

"This," he murmured, nodding toward the unmoving figure in the bed before him, "is Aya. My sister," he added even more softly.

Now with Ran's unspoken permission, I allowed myself to peek around the curtain and take a good, long look at the girl lying so still and unmoving before us. She was more delicate in build than her brother, easily a good half-foot shorter, with long, braided brown hair -- most likely plaited neatly each visit by Ran -- and soft, rounded features. Idly, my fingertips trailed down the curve of her arm, skirting the shunt of IV tubing. When I wrapped her hand in my own, she gave no returning squeeze. She must have been asleep for ages.

Perhaps in fairy tales, the touch of one's knight would rouse the sleeping princess once more to life, but not so with Aya. Her fingers dropping limply from mine, I turned back to Ran with an all-too-shaky smile forced upon my lips. "You don't look a thing alike..." I somehow managed to mumble.

Ran nodded, meticulously replacing the covers around his sister's body, as if to shield her from my eyes. "So I've been told."

"How long has it been? That she's been like this, that is? What happened?" The questions spilled from my lips of their own volition, unmindful of the steadily deepening crease between Ran's brows.

At first, I thought Ran might sooner punch me than respond, but after a long pause, he finally returned in a quiet tone, "It's not yet a year she's been in a coma. My family was murdered -- Aya and I should be dead as well, by all rights." Glancing down at her, he traced the edge of her cheek with a feather-soft touch. "Sometimes, I think it might have been best if we were."

"Ran!" I sputtered, taken suddenly aback. Anger rose hotly to the surface, and I dug my nails into my palms to keep from losing my cool completely. "You can't mean that! There's still hope for Aya-chan, isn't there?"

Normally, I'd have expected Ran to bite back with a retort of his own, but this time, he merely smiled sadly -- and somehow, that was infinitely worse. "I never said that's what I wanted, Yuushi. I only said it'd be easier."

"Hmph," I sniffed, arms crossing tightly across my chest. "Just like you to avoid the easy road. I'm sorry to say that it's better, at least, in this case."

Ran continued on as if I hadn't commented at all. "The longer she stays like this, the less chance the doctors give her to ever recover. She may stay this way forever."

I slipped around the corner of Aya's bed, crossing over to the side where Ran stood, and placed a hand upon his shoulder. "It must be so difficult. I'm sorry."

Briefly, a glimmer of sadness lit in his eyes -- an instant of helpless desperation, making Ran appear so much like the confused teenager he might otherwise have been -- before the stony mask returned once more to the surface, clouding any semblance of emotion. "You have no idea."

"Oh, I'd like to think I have more of an idea than you know," I said gently, never once removing my hand from his shoulder. Turning my attention to the young girl who appeared to be simply sleeping before us, a tiny smile rose to my lips. "I didn't come here solely to spy on you, you realize."

Ran rolled his eyes. "You could have fooled me," he muttered with seeming indifference, betrayed only by the way he trailed off, as if even he didn't fully believe his own words.

"Honestly, Ran. I came to visit my own sister. She's not in the same state as Aya-chan, but ... she's far from completely well," I said, my voice dropping steadily lower with each sentence. Ran's shoulders tensed beneath my fingertips, and I let out a wry chuckle. "If you don't believe me, you may go to number 1119 and see for yourself -- it's just down the hall. But do get your proof at some point today. Taiyou-chan is due to be released at some point this evening, once she awakens."

My hand slid away from him as I sank to the edge of Aya's bed, sitting with great care along the edge. I probably didn't need to take such pains; she wasn't going to awaken anytime soon, and certainly not by my unsettling of the bed. "They're nothing alike in most respects," I mused, brushing away the bangs of a young girl slightly taller and more willowy than my own stockier sister. Taiyou would never want to be seen in a state similar to the one Aya was in -- prideful to the end, she was, very much like Aya's older brother.

"Taiyou-chan comes every other week for dialysis treatment. She'll need a replacement kidney at some point in her life, or she will die." I closed my eyes, fingers gripping in my lap so close the knuckles had gone white, the tight smile never once dropping. "It must be some cruel twist of fate that our blood types are just dissimilar enough that I will not ever be a suitable donor. In the meantime," I continued, letting out a long breath between parted lips, "she and I will wait, and I will do everything in my capability to ensure she receives the best care imaginable. Much the same way you do, I'd presume, with Aya-chan."

For what seemed like an eternity, Ran didn't -- or couldn't -- respond, filling the short distance between us with an infinite well of silence. I probably shouldn't have expected as much from him as I did; after all, I'd made the inherent mistake of acknowledging that Taiyou's situation was nowhere near the same magnitude as Aya's. There were still certain bridges neither of us would be fully capable of crossing -- he'd never understand the gradual wearing away of one's sanity, patience and finances with a perpetually ill sibling, just as I would never know what it was like to lose everything held dear in a single fell swoop.

But when I looked up, Ran was staring expressionlessly at me, a pack of cigarettes extended toward my face, the filters of two already shaken out. "Ah -- thank you, but I don't need that," I said with a shake of my head. "And it's certainly not something that Aya-chan should be exposed to."

Ran withdrew the proffered pack after taking out a single cigarette for himself and cradling it between his fingers. "I never would," he muttered, his tone bordering on the fringes of offended.

"Please. It's nothing," I said in order to diffuse the minute knot of tension. Placing my hands upon my knees, I pushed myself to my feet, feeling somehow exposed -- vulnerable, as Ran might have felt the moment I'd walked in on him. "Excuse me. I've already overstayed my welcome as it is."

But Ran merely gave me an accepting nod. "I'll walk out with you. Just..." He paused, rolling the cigarette between his fingertips. "If you don't mind, I'd like a moment, with Aya."

"Of course." He didn't look at me as I slipped past him, but he did drop the tiniest of smiles when I touched my hand briefly to his shoulder. "Thank you, Ran."

Ran didn't speak another word, or even acknowledge my words of gratitude -- for understanding, in his own way, that perhaps at the core, neither of us was too dramatically different from the other. As I departed from Aya's room, giving Ran his moment of solitude, I found my soul somewhat calmed. It might not be completely all right, but at least neither of us would need to be alone.


End file.
